February 28^th, year 788 of the Imperial calendar

***

"Oi Sylvia, why are you dragging me here?", a girl with flaming red hair asked in confusion.

"Max's camping at the entrance of my room and I don't want to deal with him", Sylvia calmly replied.

"I can get that, but why do you have to drag me with you?"

"..."

"Don't tell me you're that lonely?", the girl, whose identity was Ria Pyrian, asked jokingly.

Sylvia just hung her head down low in response.

"Shit, didn't expect it to actually be true. Uh sorry, I guess"

"It's okay", Sylvia meekly replied while still keeping that emotionless face she always had. "That's not the only reason anyways. I also wanted to try stargazing with someone"

"But there aren't that many stars tonight"

"Maybe more will show up when we get to that spot", Sylvia said in a monotonous tone.

"Do you think stars are animal or something? How can they show up when there aren't any tonight in the first place?"

"..."

Ria sighed. If she didn't know beforehand about Sylvia's ability, she would have thought that Sylvia was mad at her. Thus, she decided to just follow Sylvia from behind.

After walking in silence for a few minutes, however, Ria winced in pain as she bumped into Sylvia's back.

"Ow! Why did you sto—"

"Shhhh", Sylvia shushed Ria and pointed forwards.

Ria followed the direction Sylvia was pointing at, only to see a girl being cornered by a hooded man around a few hundred meters away from where they were.

"Isn't that the Saintess?", Ria squinted her eyes as she recognized the girl.

"Which one? The Saintess of Lighting or the Saintess of Wind?"

"No, she's Amelia the Saintess of Life. She's in our class, don't you remember her?"

Sylvia frowned for a second before shaking her head.

Ria sighed in defeat. 'This girl, she really doesn't remember anyone that isn't worthy in her eyes'

"Should we help her?", Sylvia asked for Ria's opinion. After all, she didn't want to be rash and repeat that incident ever again.

Ria observed the situation a bit more. After seeing Amelia falling to the ground butt-first and making a terrified face, she concluded that Amelia was in trouble. She and the man were no lovers doing shady stuff in the middle of the night like Ria had originally thought.

Sighing, Ria took out a pair of gloves from her pockets and put them on. "Might as well"

As soon as Ria said that, Sylvia dashed into action. She channeled mana into her throat, before activating one of her Authorities.

{Freeze}

Immediately after, surges of icy cold mana shot towards the hooded man, freezing his legs in place.

"What? Who dares!", the man roared in rage, clearly not finding being interrupted of his fun time very amusing.

Upon seeing Sylvia and Ria in the distance, however, his face full of anger turned into amusement and joy.

"HAHAHA! I CAN'T BELIEVE 3 OF MY TARGETS CAME RIGHT TO ME! WHAT A LUCKY DAY!"

He then released his D- rank mana, instantly breaking Sylvia's ice.

Sylvia frowned inwardly. Although spells that formed through single-word Authorities were weaker than their normal counterpart, she had expected him to at least struggle for a bit, especially when Sylvia herself was only a minor rank lower than him.

Seeing that the man was recovering from her attack, she decided to use her Star magic.

[Steller projection], she chanted. The only star in the sky twinkled for a split second, before a translucent blue screen appeared right in front of her eyes.

Sylvia clicked her tongue. 'What bad luck...'

However, she needed to focus on the battle ahead of her. She couldn't win against a D- ranked individual in a direct battle. No matter how strong she was, she simply could not do it. The sheer difference in power was too great.

Despite knowing that, she was strangely excited about the battle. After all, everyone in Avaron were weakling in her opinion, well, maybe everyone except Arthur, who resisted her Authority and showed explosive growth, and that mysterious pink-haired girl who managed to deceive her perception twice. 

'If he's at D rank then maybe I can let loose', she thought. After all, her father and grandfather were so overprotective of her that they didn't let her fight any of the knights ranked higher than her, despite her constantly telling them that her ability could get temporary suppressed that way.

However, she soon shook herself off such thoughts.

'Maybe another time then'. She decided that she would not use her Eyes, at least not when Amelia was still in range of it.

[Ice weapon: Scythe], she chanted. A two-handed battle scythe made out of ice manifested in her hands. She dashed forwards, and made a slashing motion. 

Contrary to Sylvia's expectations, the man didn't even try to dodge the blow.

"ARRGH!", he screamed in pain. The tip of the scythe impaled the man's shoulder, tearing his flesh off, and slowly but surely giving him severe frostbite. However, he still smirked at Sylvia.

Sensing something was amiss, she tried to pull the scythe out of his shoulder, but it was firmly stuck there.

She then let go of the scythe and tried to retreat back a couple of steps. But she was too late.

"Hahaha, you fell into my trap!". The man lets out a crazed laughter, before chanting an ominous spell.

[Miasma smog]. Instantly, black colored smoke flew towards Sylvia. She couldn't help but to inhale some of it.

Still keeping her calm, she quickly chanted another spell.

[Absolute zero]. Instantly, the air around her froze. The black smoke was also frozen, now nothing more than just harmless black air struggling to float up.

However, that little amount of smoke she inhaled was enough to make her mind slowly turn hazy.

'Absolute zero is already active, should I just use Time magic alre—'

Snap—! BOOM—!

A snapping sound, followed by a pillar of flame forming right under the man's feet interrupted Sylvia's thoughts. 

"AHHHHHH!", he screamed in pain as the hilltop was dyed in a bright orange shade.

Not waiting for the pillar of fire to subside, Sylvia tried to give the man the finishing blow. However, Ria grabbed her shoulders and stopped her.

"Don't, we need him alive for interrogation"

Sylvia nodded, and came to Amelia to check on her, leaving the man for Ria to handle.

-[Fire bind]—

She could hear Ria chanting a few more spells from behind, but she paid it no mind. 'I'm sure she knows what she's doing'

Sylvia soon approached the terrified Amelia and spoke in a calm tone. "Are you alright?"

Amelia, still shaken from the earlier encounter, slowly nodded.

Sylvia, still worried about Amelia, checked up on her.

Although Amelia was mostly unscathed, Sylvia couldn't help but notice the blisters on Amelia's feet. "Why didn't you heal your feet?"

"I- I can't heal myself"

"I see"

Awkwardly staring at Amelia for a few seconds, Sylvia suddenly sensed a painful headache assaulting her.

"Ow", she exclaimed in a flat tone. If it wasn't for her clutching her own head intensely, no one would have really known that she was in pain.

"Can you heal me?"

"S- sorry. I c- can't heal poisoning"

Sylvia wanted to lash out at the healer's uselessness but she chose not to. After all, she could barely keep herself conscious, much less spend her energy reprimanding Amelia.

But then, she then suddenly remember a technique. She sat cross-legged and focused on raising the circulation rate of her mana.

"Fwahh~", she wiped her sweat after 2 minutes of concentrating. The poison was finally out of her system. Leaving the amazed Amelia behind, she moved towards where Ria was.

"Still going?"

"Mhm, he's a tough nut to crack". Despite being burnt alive, the man still refused to talk, which just made Ria more frustrated.

"Let me try then"

"Tell me, why are you here", Sylvia asked in a cold voice.

"Kuhahah, you think I'd tell you? I'd rather die than betray my organization"

'So an organization is behind this... interesting', Sylvia noted.

The man, blissfully unaware that he was feeding them information, started to let his mouth loose more.

"Hey little girls, stop this puny little fire here right now and strip down. Then maybe I, the great vice-leader Ferben of the strike squad, will spare you".

After a few seconds, however, he realized his mistake as his expression turned to that of shock. He couldn't believe that his mouth was that loose. Where did all of his professional trainings against torture go?

'Vice leader? Strike squad?', Sylvia was confused. There wasn't any organization that used those terms as far as she was aware.

'Maybe I'll ask brother about this', she decided to just leave it to her older brother to investigate further.

She wanted to knock the man out immediately and bring him back to the professors for more interrogation, but—

"You insolent bastard, I dare you to say that again in front of this daughter of duke Pyrian!", Ria screamed in anger. Clearly, something the hooded man said had just hit her nerves.

"Stop, Ria. Can't you see that he's deliberately provoking you?", Sylvia calmly reprimanded Ria.

"Sylvia Ecertold, let her do whatever she wants to me", the man smirked. He just wanted to die as soon as possible, lest he divulge more information to his enemies.

"Why should I listen to you?"

"Why shouldn't you listen to me? After all, you're but a filthy mother kille—"

{Freeze}

Being severely weakened, Sylvia's Authority froze his entire body this time.

Due to the sudden change in temperature, the ice cracked, turning the man's body into several frozen chunks of meat.

Sylvia, whose eyes were trembling in anger, quickly calmed down as she noticed Ria also shaking in the anger that was not her own's.

'He got me good', she sighed inwardly as he saw the smirk on his bodiless face. 'But how did that bastard know about it?'

Remembering what the hooded man was about to say to her, she couldn't help but to feel immense sadness and anger.

However, she decided to just forget about it for now, as she didn't want to risk exposing Amelia and Ria to her Eyes.

Sighing, she dragged the man's corpse, or at least what was left of it, with her and carried Amelia back to Avaron with Ria.

"So Amelia, what are you doing up here in this hour?", Ria tried to ease the awkward and quiet atmosphere they had while walking back to to Avaron's main building.

Amelia, perhaps sensing a strange sense of reliability from her two classmates, didn't stutter in her speeches anymore. "Well, it's a long story. You probably don't want to hear it"

"Come on, tell us! Even Sylvia want to hear it too", Ria said as she looked at Sylvia straight in her eyes. "Right?"

"...Sure, I guess", Sylvia decided to play along with Ria.

"Well, if you insist...", Amelia then told the two girls about her story with Raun, from how they met, all the way until what happened today.

"I see...", Ria mumbled. "So... how do you want to go with it?"

"...?"

"I mean, what will you do? Will you forgive him or what?"

After thinking for a long time, Amelia finally gave her answer. "I'm not sure... I still love him... but I can't rest my heart without knowing whether he really loved me back or not"

"Hmmm...". Ria tapped her finger on her chins for a bit and then came up with a solution. "How about you fake dating someone else?"

"Huh?", Amelia was confused. 'Did I hear it right?'

"If he still indeed loves you, he would get jealous and try to take you back. Then you can confirm your feelings!"

Amelia immediately brightened up upon hearing Ria's explanation. "Great idea! Thanks, master Ria"

"No problems, just consult me whenever you want, my dear discipline of romance!", Ria puffed her chest in pride.

Sylvia just listened to their conversation in silence while carrying Amelia on her back. She saw something very wrong with Ria's advice. Every time Ria genuinely tried to give someone a suggestion, it always ended disastrously. But who was she to meddle in their affairs? 

'Well, maybe I should intervene this one time', Sylvia thought as she looked at Amelia smiling really brightly with Ria. She hated to pour cold water onto her but it would be better than letting Amelia regretting following Ria's words later.

"Amelia, I don't thi—"

Interrupting Sylvia's sentence was a vaguely familiar presence rapidly coming towards her direction.

'It must be the man's allies', Sylvia thought, completely disregarding the faint familiarity the presence gave off. After all, she couldn't afford to be careless when they were still quite a distance away from Avaron's main buildings.

Thus, she decided to catch the person alive, to make up for her killing the supposed vice-leader earlier.

{Kneel}, she spoke in a barely audible voice. Despite being spoken in a low voice, Sylvia judged that it would have been more than enough to suppress the person, as she sensed that he was only at peak F rank. However—

"Amelia!", the presence revealed itself to be a boy with jet black hair. He was wearing 3 pairs of sunglasses, which looked absolutely ridiculous. 

But, Sylvia couldn't care less whether he looked funny or not, since—

'He's the one with the pink-haired girl!'. Sylvia could never forget that strange fashion style of his. She had never seen anyone so adamant about wearing sunglasses before in her entirely. But more importantly, 'He's the owner of that shiny pocket watch!'

The shiny watch was what led to her first encounter with the boy in the first place. Being a dragon, or at least part of it, she couldn't really resist the urge to snatch the watch for herself when she saw its gleaming light all the way from the female dormitories.

However, what surprised her the most wasn't because of his weird fashion sense, or his watch, but that—

'He resisted my Authority?'. Sylvia knew the strength of her classmates best, as she had always observed everyone, trying to find people who could compete with her.

And the only people whose strength she recognized were in the top 10. Even then, she thought that only Arthur and Eleanor was able to give her a decent fight.

And there's this situation, where an F-ranked student whose name she never heard of just shrugged off her Authority like it was nothing.

'Interesting...', Sylvia thought. But she decided to not confront him right now. Instead, she made notes to investigate his background a little bit before assessing him any further. After all, she couldn't be too careful about someone who was potentially hiding his strength like him.

Snapping out of her thoughts, she looked around only to see that Amelia and the male student was gone.

"Huh? Where did they go?"

"You didn't notice? He took Amelia off your back and ran back to Avaron. Apparently he's her friend or something"

"..." Sylvia was ashamed of herself. She was so immersed in her thoughts that she didn't even notice the student going behind her and snatching Amelia from her.

Sighing, she walked back to her dorms with Ria. Seemed that she really couldn't go stargazing tonight.
***

In a dark room inside of a damp cave, several figures were sitting together, discussing some ominous plans of theirs. Suddenly, a yellow candle, whose light was shinning brightly, was suddenly snuffed out.

Everyone stared at the now-extinguished candle with uncomfortable silence, before someone realized what was going on. "Jesus Christ! Ferben died!"

The whole room fell into panic. However, a hooded figure, who seemed to be their leader, managed to keep his calm.

"Silence"

Seeing that everyone had quieted down, the figure started speaking. "That fool's death may be a blessing in disguise. Whether it was because of a professor or a student, it doesn't change the fact that we have greatly underestimated Avaron"

"Madeline, contact the headquarters, tell them to send us reinforcements for the upcoming mission". He then walked out of the room coldly, not minding the murmurs of his subordinates.

'Hope they'll send someone actually useful this time'
***

I brought Amelia back to her dorm room using [Alternate dimension]. The mana cost for two people was great but it was better than being materials for some rumors.

Although, I was somewhat concerned, since Amelia and Sylvia wasn't supposed to make contact this early.

'Well, it's probably not that big of a deal', I thought since Raun had fucked the plotline up anyways.

I was about to leave the room, but suddenly, I felt someone tugging on my sleeves.

"Theodore..."

"What?"

Amelia stared at me with a beet red face and mustered up all of her courage. "W- will you go on a d- date with me?"

'...'